Chicken Little
by Libquedation
Summary: Meet Jennifer from the 45th Ohio Branch of the War Effort. She is harboring a secret, one that only her and her platoon of fighters have discovered about the aliens, scarring her for life.


**This is my first Falling Skies story, and it is only a oneshot, but it was a random plot bunny that's been floating around in my head for a few days now, and I just had to get it out. **

**Disclaimer: I do not own Falling Skies. I wish I did, but Spielberg has claims on it for now…**

"Mac! Watch where you're going bro!" A fighter yelled to the tall Asian teenager who had just bumped into him.

"Sorry, sorry." Mac said, straightening his black beanie over his black straight hair, continuing down the apartment's hallway, walking towards the medical section of the apartment complex.

"Hey, Jenessa, can I interview Jennifer over here?" Mac asked when he opened the door to the apartment that had been deemed the recovery section for wounded fighters and civilians. Jenessa was the lead nurse and doctor for the 45th Ohio Branch. Her long black braid swept over her shoulder as she eyed Mac.

"Now why do you want to do that?" she asked with a smile on her face from the barren kitchen area, with pills and gauze laid all over the counter.

"Because he's in love with her, duh." A fighter, Wally, called from the couch where he was obviously waiting for Jenessa to fix his broken toe.

"I am not!" Mac protested, his ears turning bright red under his mop of hair.

"Aw, look he's blushing." Wally said, laughing. Mac glared and tugged his beanie self consciously over his ears. Jenessa rolled her eyes and threw a bottle of pills at Wally.

"She's in the bedroom down the hall on the left. I'll give you ten minutes; can't have you riling up our fighters." Jenessa said, going back to what she was doing before.

"Thanks." Mac said, hurrying towards the hallway. On his way there, he smacked Wally on the back of the head with his M-16 he had strapped across his chest. Wally glared at him, but Mac simply smiled and ducked down the hallway.

He knocked on the door only after his face had stopped being so red.

A chorus of "come in" assaulted him, and he slowly opened the door.

It was a small room, but there were two beds and an air mattress crammed into the empty space on the floor. Jennifer sat on the bed closest to the door, being the most experienced of the fighters in the room. The other two occupants were a 10 year old little girl who had a blood stained bandage wrapped around her head, and a 15 year old fighter who had some wicked road rash along her arms and legs.

Jennifer was sitting awkwardly, her left leg stretched out across the bed, a bandage wrapped tightly around her lower leg. Her long honey colored air swung over her shoulder as she glanced towards the door. Her breath escaped her in a laugh and she motioned for Mac to step inside.

"You up for an interview?" Mac asked eagerly, swinging his gun over his back and grabbing his video camera from his pocket.

For all he knew, he had the only working video camera in the remaining United States, so he spent his battery wisely, charged it when he could, and saved his film, usually for interviews or covert recordings of the aliens.

Jennifer laughed and nodded. She scooted along the bed until her back was against the wall. Then she leaned over and pat the bed with her hand, inviting him to sit.

Mac sat down on the edge of the bed, messing with his camera for a few seconds before turning it on. The other girls in the room went to the other bed, playing a card game of some sort.

"So…" Jennifer trailed off, looking at Mac expectantly, raising her eyebrows.

"Okay," he said, raising the camera and pointing it at her, clearing his throat. "State your name and rank."

Jennifer smiled and looked away before turning back to the camera. "Jennifer Gerald, fighter for the 45th Ohio Branch."

"Why are you here in the recovery ward?" Mac asked with a mock serious anchorman face. Jennifer laughed again.

"I got shot in my lower leg." She said quietly, all the laughter draining from her face.

Mac had known that, but he didn't know how she still had her leg if the aliens shot her.

"By what?"

"A human."

Now that was more of a shock to him. "How'd you get shot by a human?"

Jennifer shrugged one shoulder and gave a hopeless look to the camera. "It was purposeful."

All the mock seriousness left Mac. "Why?"

Jennifer sighed and looked around the room for a minute before looking back at the camera. "It's a long explanation, you sure you're up to it?"

Mac nodded, causing Jennifer to straighten up.

"Okay, well this is only known by my group of fighters. Just saying." She said pointedly. "It would cause more harm then good."

Mac nodded. "Understood. Now explain. Please." He added at her look.

"We discovered the aliens won't take anyone who is physically harmed. Like, curable diseases they don't care about, whatever drug they use in their harness heals all ailments, all symptoms of them at least."

"I knew that. My brother, Peter, got snatched right at the beginning of all this. He had a cold, but the last time I saw him, he looked perfectly fine…even as a slave." Mac finished up a little sadly.

Jennifer nodded. "Yeah, I know. We know. But we have never seen them take any kid that is injured right?" Mac thought for a second.

"Never have seen or heard about it."

"Exactly." Jennifer said, nodding excitedly. "So we figured, they won't take anyone they can't cure quickly, right? That would defeat the purpose of having healthy slaves if they captured a kid who had a missing foot or hand or had massive injuries."

Mac leaned back in realization. "So you got snatched and then shot."

Jennifer looked away, her gaze off into space. Her hands were fumbling with something in her lap, and Mac panned the camera down to see her messing around with a Rubix cube.

"Why are you doing that?" He asked, motioning downwards. Jennifer shook her head and looked at him questioningly, then glanced at her lap, where she was solving and de-solving the Rubix cube rhythmically.

"It keeps me relaxed." She whispered, easily solving one side, then another.

"Why do you need it to keep you relaxed?" Mac asked, curious and worried. He had to struggle not to put his arm around her to comfort her from whatever she was feeling.

"When I got snatched, they froze me first. You know how they do that, they have that beam that freezes and then the aliens come over and harness you."

Mac nodded, motioning for her to continue.

Jennifer stopped looking at the camera, like you're supposed to, and looked Mac dead in the eye with her own blue ones.

"You're paralyzed in that beam. You can't move, can't even breathe. You feel it, it's cold, like you just jumped into a freezing river, but you can't escape it. The last thing you would see is the alien descending on you to strap a harness on your back."

"How did you escape?" Mac whispered, gritting his teeth.

Jennifer looked away, clenching her teeth. Drawing a breath in through her nose, she closed her eyes, her hands working the cube even faster than before. She bit her lip then looked back at the camera.

"When the alien came over to inspect me to take me away, bleeding out of the leg as I was, I noticed something in my eye line. One of the two aliens was wearing a small band on its wrist. I assume it is a screen that scans the captured kid. The beam they catch 'em in must diagnose their body."

"But how did you get out?" He asked, leaning forward again, the camera close to her face. Jennifer glanced over to the other two girls, but they were into their card game and were being so noisy about it. Jennifer looked down at her lap, at the now finished Rubix cube.

"If you are unable to become a slave, they simply release you and walk away. That's it." She looked up tears in her eyes. Mac quickly shut off the camera.

"You okay?" He asked, leaning closer to his friend. She bit her lip again and looked at the wall, muscles in her neck working as she struggled for a moment.

"I'll be okay in time. Jenessa says that I'll get past the shock of it soon enough. It just takes time."

"She's dealt with this before?" Mac asked, placing a hand on Jennifer's anxious ones, calming the steady motion of the Rubix cube.

"Only one other time. They wore out of the shock in about a week." Jennifer turned and looked at Mac. "It's only been three days for me." She sounded so heartbroken when she said it, Mac couldn't help but to wrap his arms around her. He felt her take a few shuddering breaths.

In his chest, Jennifer scrunched her face up, trying to keep her calm. She had succeeded so far, but it was killing her inside. She woke up each night with nightmares of being trapped, cold, paralyzed rushing through her brain.

Every night that happened for the past three nights. Even when she napped it happened.

Drawing in another deep breath, Jennifer pulled away, placing the Rubix cube on the table next to her bed.

"You okay?" Mac asked, reaching out to her again. Jennifer looked at him and nodded, giving him a soft smile.

"I'm okay." She said, reaching for another pack of cards. She held them up. "Gin rummy?"

Mac smiled and nodded, turning off his camera entirely and placing it beside him on the bed, placing his gun alongside it as well.

As they played and Jennifer utterly destroyed him every game, Mac realized that the girl he once knew way back in high school, all those months ago was still there, stuck beneath this hardened exterior, this mangled mask on the outside.

When he was back in the apartment complex's courtyard with the other fighters on duty at night, he found his little lonely spot of ground, then flicked open his camera and watched the interview of the day.

That's when it hit him.

The sky was done falling. There was no more chicken little, no run to run around and yell about the aliens coming.

They were here, and they were slowly destroying the human race, little by little, with every move they made.

Mac could only hope that one day, the aliens' sky would fall, and that it would fall really damn hard on top of them.


End file.
